


Doomsday Oneshots

by inkchantress



Category: Hiccup Series - Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon (Books), How to Train Your Dragon - Cressida Cowell
Genre: Fishlegs is baby and no one can tell me otherwise, Gen, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21895633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkchantress/pseuds/inkchantress
Summary: This year for Twelve Days of Doomsday, I'm writing a oneshot every other day focusing on the even-numbered books :) so I figured I should have a place to put them all. The Httyd books fandom is really really small and I'm super proud to be a part of it.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Good Luck and a Nice Strong Wind

_Dear Heir,_

_I have had a glorious Viking life._

He nearly stopped here to scratch this part out, or knock the inkwell over onto the words, or shred the whole paper entirely. Who on earth was he kidding? He’d had a life full of drunken song, wrestling, riches beyond his dreams. But all of the steps he’d taken towards what he thought he wanted took him miles away from his heart, and he didn’t realize it until he was here and his heart lay somewhere across the Sullen Sea.

_But now that I am an old, old man I find I am not so happy with my fifty years of rollicking and robbery, fighting and fresh air. I wonder if I might have run things differently._

His heartstrings bridged the distance across the waves, and as he wrote these words he felt a tug on them, a sharp twang from somewhere near the ocean all the way into his chest. It made him angry.

He kept writing.

_This treasure, for instance. The Sagas will tell you that the stealing of it was my Most Magnificent Moment._

Whether it was, whether it was not--that didn’t matter. The ranking of a Magnificent Moment, in the grand scheme of things, was so trivial that the supposed magnitude of it burned. After everything that happened, after everything he’d done, it seared his skin like pokers straight from the fire.

_But since then, it has been tearing my once-happy band of burglars apart with greed and lust for power._

That part stung the most--that after everything, he was the only person who seemed to think that things like treasure didn’t matter anymore.

 _Focus._ He was here to tell his true Heir about this. He was here to leave hope for whoever came next.

_So I have decided to get rid of it. I know that there will be men who will hear of the Legend of the Treasure and come looking for it, and for them I have buried a small chest on the Isle of the Skullions as a decoy, so that they will think that the hunt ends there._

And here he thought of his men, and the men of the future who he knew would take after them. So long as there were dragons in the sky, there would be men like this, men who thought only of two things: themselves and gold.

_I have hidden the real treasure deep, deep in this underground cavern. It has taken many, many months for my dragons to swim down here with it. It is guarded by water one way and the Caliban Caves the other._

And here, Grimbeard looked up, and he could hear the faint bone-chilling scream of dragons from the Caliban. It sent the hair on his arm on a steady path up, caused his beard to prickle. Dragons did not care for treasure, not like men. They understood its material worth, but it was of no value to them. They cared for themselves and for heat. Nothing more.

But, no. Perhaps they did care for more, some of them. Perhaps their hearts beat for more, even, than man’s. Perhaps their green blood was even purer.

_I have placed an infant Strangulator in the Cavern who shall grow in time to be a terrible Guardian indeed._

He looked up here, at the Strangulator, who was sleeping peacefully upon a mound of treasure. It squeezed its eyes and rolled over, tentacles curling. It would be alone for many years, thriving off the food source from the Caves, until his Heir arrived.

 _If_ he arrived.

_No. Focus._

_I dream of a time in the future when men will be able to own such beautiful and dangerous things and use them wisely._

And here, again, there was a tug in his chest, as if his heart, across the sea, was trying to tell him something. It made him furious, this pain, as if everything he’d done wasn’t enough. As if this aching in his heart was somehow recompense for his life.

In a way, it was. _He_ had been the men who cared for riches and glory and nothing else. He had been the very thing he was hoping and wishing and praying against. As long as there were dragons in the sky, there would be men like him.

But maybe there wouldn’t. Maybe his Heir would be sensitive, care for more than what he cared for. Maybe his Heir would be like Hiccup.

Even the thought of Hiccup made him wildly nauseated.

_I dream of an Heir who shall be a Dragon-Whisperer, a Swordfighter, a Man who talks with Monsters and who will harness the power of Thor’s thunder itself..._

Grimbeard had to pause here, for his hand was trembling like it would never see heat again. His guilt rose to his skin like a hard-to-banish shadow, eating at him from within. He tried to pick up the pen again, but couldn’t, and here he really considered knocking the inkwell over the whole thing and leaving the caves with no letter at all.

 _No._ No matter what, his next Heir needed to hear this. His final hope, a boy who would one day, hopefully, do a better job than he had.

Ugh. Thor and Woden and all the rest of them, his hope really had become rested on someone who might never even exist. This was how thin he was stretched--his lifeline was hanging on a boy who may never come.

His heartstrings tugged, and he had to fight against letting them pull him out of the cave, into the ocean and drowning him.

Then again... what a way to go. Killed by his own heart.

_This Heir will come and he will find my treasure. I give it to him freely, all of it, and he shall know what to do with it._

He pictured his Heir now, reading the letter, taking in his scratchy handwriting, unfazed by the treasure that surrounded him, a dragon perhaps on his shoulder. His Heir who would use equally his head and his heart, he would think and love and be kind and strong and sensitive. He would succeed where Grimbeard had failed.

He had to.

_I wish you good luck and a nice strong wind._

_May the winds that blow you be strong,_ he thought to himself, although he did not write it. _May you go places I never went, may you accomplish what I never could. May you be the hope for us all._

And he drew Endeavour out of its scabbard and placed it on a mountain of gold beside the slumbering Strangulator. His second-best sword, sturdy, bright, still with him after all this time. Perhaps it was even the best, really; the Stormblade was flashy, but heavy, and difficult to balance. Perhaps they were the same. Perhaps second-best was best.

Grimbeard nailed the letter to the side of the door and stepped back to look at the room, at the last piece of his heart, the rest of which lay somewhere across the ocean and was out of his reach now. He was never going back; there was nothing left. He had burned it all to the ground. Only his heart remained, calling out, pulling him, and it would soon be silenced.

Once again, for the last time, he pictured his Heir, reading the letter. A man who talks with Monsters. A Dragon-Whisperer, a Swordfighter.

Grimbeard put a hand to his chest, where the absence of the lobster claws felt so light it was nearly alien. That was another clue, that by now lay somewhere across the sea, in the Meathead islands. It would return; it was only a matter of time. And his Heir would figure it out.

Perhaps it would even be a Hiccup, in the end. After all, there was a _second_ Hiccup, and we all knew how that turned out. Who was to say there couldn’t be a _third?_ What if there was to be a _third_ Accident, who brought together all the clues that he’d left behind and finally reached where the other two had come so close to reaching?

 _No._ Impossible. The Fates do not make mistakes.

And yet...

His son, his Hiccup, was not a mistake. He knew that, now. It had taken him ages to see it, but now he knew.

Who’s to say that Accidents are not gifts, in disguise?

Another pull on Grimbeard’s heartstrings, and this time he knew what it meant. With one last look at the letter, one final vision of his legacy--all of his clues, the treasure, the Things. (He hoped they would never have a King again, but just in case it came to that... it helped to be prepared.)

He walked toward the entrance of the cave, nodded at the Strangulator, and passed on through the doorway. All of his clues were in place. Everything was set for a repetition of history, for another Grimbeard, for his Heir to arrive...

For a small, deliberately placed _hiccup_ in the gears _..._

He had no dragons; all of them who helped carry his treasure were gone, back to the Caliban. His clues were set. Berk had been burned to the ground.

Grimbeard took his last breath--stale, humid cavern air, not altogether satisfying, but that didn’t matter now--and stepped into the pool of water at the bottom of the cavern. 

It was time for a new era.

He closed his eyes as the water enveloped him.


	2. The Workings of Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doomsday, day 4--Fishlegs, lying in bed while Hiccup and Camicazi risk their lives to bring him the Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name, has a conversation with Old Wrinkly.

Fishlegs woke to the sound of screaming.

It took him a good thirty seconds to realize that he was the one who was screaming, and by that time, Old Wrinkly was there by his bedside, stroking his shoulder and easing him back down into a horizontal position.

“Easy,” said the old man soothingly. “Easy. It was a dream, that’s all. You need to rest.”

“Hiccup,” whispered Fishlegs. “It’s Hiccup.”

“What happened to Hiccup?” Old Wrinkly asked.

“He died,” whispered Fishlegs. It seemed like that scream had taken everything out of him, and now he could speak no louder than a whisper. He didn’t  _ want  _ to speak any louder, anyway; this was a crisis, after all, and if he spoke any louder he’d end up working himself up into a scream again. “He died. They all died. The Doomfang, in that story you told, is real. It’s real. It cracked the ice and they barely escaped and then they got the Vegetable but then they died. They all died. Because of me.”

“Hush,” soothed Old Wrinkly. “It’s not real. They’re not dead. And I can assure you, if the fires have any say in the matter, that they won’t be dying anytime soon.”

Fishlegs’ head felt like someone was continually kicking it, and he didn’t think he could feel his toes.  _ Bother  _ this cold. If Hiccup got himself killed out there, by any huge dragons or crazy axe-murderers or something equally horrifying, Fishlegs would never be able to forgive himself. Hiccup will have died over nothing more than a  _ common cold. _

Then again...

What if it  _ was  _ Vorpentitis?

What if Old Wrinkly wasn’t as garbage at soothsaying as everybody said?

“But I will,” muttered Fishlegs.

“Did you say something?”

“I will,” Fishlegs repeated. “Be dying soon. According to you, I’m dying tomorrow.”

Old Wrinkly only smiled knowingly. “We’ll see about that.”

Fishlegs frowned at that, propping himself up on his elbow in order to remain vertical. “You said I have Vorpentitis.”

“Oh,” the old man chortled, “you definitely have Vorpentitis.”

Fishlegs was getting impatient. “And you said I’ll die at exactly ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Unless...” Old Wrinkly prompted.

“Unless... Hiccup comes back,” said Fishlegs. “With the potato.”

“Shh!” hissed Old Wrinkly fervently.

Fishlegs rolled his eyes. “With the  _ Vegetable _ . So... you think he’ll come back.”

“It does not matter what I think,” Old Wrinkly stated.

A wave of dizziness hit Fishlegs, and his arm gave way beneath him, so he had to resume lying flat on his side. Old Wrinkly wet a rag and placed it on his forehead, then resumed a seat beside him, staring down at him like one might stare at a puzzle very close to being solved.

Fishlegs drifted, and he found himself fervently wishing he was asleep. “So my Beserk tendencies,” he said, trying to stay awake. “You think they’re because of Vorpentitis.”

“I do not know,” admitted Old Wrinkly. “I have never met a Beserk before. I have never met anyone quite like you, Fishlegs.”

“That’s not true,” replied Fishlegs. “Hiccup is like me.”

“How?”

“We’re both runts,” said Fishlegs, with a bit more spite than was truly called for.

“And?”

When Fishlegs couldn’t answer, Old Wrinkly nodded. “You are your own people. Hiccup is Hiccup. Fishlegs is Fishlegs. Do not confuse the two.”

“Right,” spat Fishlegs. “ _ Hiccup  _ is out right now, risking his life to save mine, and I don’t even have the strength to sit up straight.” Here, he tried to get himself into an upright position, and managed to hold it for nineteen trembling seconds before crashing back down onto the bed again.

Old Wrinkly calmly picked up the rag, which had fallen off of Fishlegs’ head when he’d sat up, and placed it on the angry boy’s forehead once more. “Hiccup is fighting for you, this is true,” he said. “But he also has some things to work out. He’s fighting for himself, too, and I think he’ll soon see that.”

After several seconds of Fishlegs fuming at his own incompetence in silence, he turned to the old man. “Why am I like this? Why do I go Berserk?”

Old Wrinkly simply shrugged.

“It’s like...” Fishlegs frowned. “It’s like, I’m quite levelheaded overall, really, I am. But then something happens and it’s like this great fog descends--” and here he modeled with his hands, a great anger cloud enveloping him-- “and then all of my logic, everything that makes me  _ me,  _ it’s all gone. And all I want to do is just--go insane. Destroy everything I see. Scream insults at people who I know can kill me. Why? You must know why. Where did it come from? Why was I chosen to have it? What use is there for it?”

“I don’t know,” replied Old Wrinkly sadly.

“Please,” begged Fishlegs. “Please. I need to know. I need to know  _ why. _ ”

“I cannot tell you, because I don’t know,” said Old Wrinkly again. “I’m sorry. If I knew, I would tell you.”

The Beserk itch started up, crawling under Fishlegs’ skin like a dangerous parasite. He swallowed it down and aimed a kick at the wall instead. “Great. The one big mystery of my life, the only question I’ve ever wanted an answer to, and the man who knows everything can’t even tell me.”

“I am sorry,” repeated Old Wrinkly, a sorrowful ache sprouting in his heart as he watched the boy. Barely twelve, on his deathbed, already sick of the world. He felt Fishlegs’ anger radiating off of him in waves, and it made him terribly sad, that such a young boy had so much resentment.

“You should be,” muttered Fishlegs. “You can’t tell me why I am the way I am. You can’t tell me what I’m doing here. Is there even a reason that I’m here at all? Maybe there’s not. Maybe the reason why I survived was nothing but a freak accident, maybe  _ I’m  _ nothing but a freak Accident, and this sickness is Fate coming to finish what she should have finished long ago.”

He took the cloth off his forehead and stared at it. “But of course, you can’t tell me that, either. Do you even know _ anything?” _

Old Wrinkly let that hang in the air for a couple of seconds, and then he spoke. “I think you’ll find, my boy,” he said, “that I know rather less than people think I know. I do not know why you were chosen for this any more than I know whether or not the earth is round.”

He took the cloth from Fishlegs’ hands and placed it back on his forehead. “I do not know why you survived. I don’t know why you have Vorpentitis. I don’t know why things are the way that they are. All I know, Fishlegs, is that this is the world we live in.”

He sighed. “So, yes. Maybe you are right. Maybe I don’t know anything.”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Fishlegs quietly. “I just wanted to know...”

“...why. Yes. Only Fate herself knows, I’m afraid.”

Fishlegs turned his head and watched the snow fall in flurries, thick and white, outside the window. Then, suddenly, he blurted out “I hate being an Accident.”

Old Wrinkly turned to look at him.

“I hate being a runt, knowing that my mother tried to kill me, knowing I’m supposed to be dead.” His cheeks colored, though with fever or emotion it was impossible to tell. “You know, a part of me sort of wishes that Hiccup comes back too late and that Fate takes care of me. I hate being myself.”

“If Fate wanted you dead,” said Old Wrinkly calmly, “you would be dead.”

“It must have been an accident,” replied Fishlegs.

“It is astounding to me,” said Old Wrinkly, “how, after everything you’ve been through in your rather short life, you can still believe in accidents.”

Fishlegs said nothing.

“I may not know much,” the old man continued, “but I trust that Fate knows her business.” He ran a wrinkly finger along the lobster claws around Fishlegs’ neck. “You are no Accident, Fishlegs. What you are, exactly, remains to be seen; but you are not an Accident.”

Fishlegs’ glasses were askew, his nose still a blaring red. His eyes were already closing, and it struck Old Wrinkly in that moment just how young he was for such big things. “Thank you,” he yawned. “Perhaps you do know something, after all.”

The old man chuckled. “Do not thank me,” he replied. He added colder water to the cloth and put it on Fishlegs’ head again. “And you were right. I really do not know anything. In fact,” he continued, “I think I have a thing or two to learn from you.”


	3. The Hooligan National Anthem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fishlegs’ Big Moment in book 8 when he’s getting lowered to his death and decides to sing.

Fishlegs was going to lose his mind even more than he’d already lost it.

Was that even possible? To lose something more than it had already been lost?

Fishlegs hoped so. If not, he was running out of things to lose. Pretty soon he’d have nothing left.

He was dangerously close to that path even now. All he had left was Hiccup (which was debatable at the moment), the lobster claws around his neck, a deep-seated queasy feeling in his stomach, the smallest sliver of sanity, and a pen.

Not much.

_ Oh, for Thor’s sake. _

The squeaking of the cage being lowered was the last sound he’d ever hear, combined with a roaring in his ears and the Scarers chanting, chanting, chanting.

_ “He’s going to die... he’s going to die...” _

Humongous’ words rang in his ears.  _ You die a Hero. _

Fishlegs found himself fervently wishing he could go Berserk right about now. Oh, to be lowered to his death red in the face, screaming, a Berserk strong and true. A Viking at last.

But he searched himself and found he wasn’t angry. Not even a bit.

He was petrified.

As if the Scarers could hear him thinking that, they clustered even more around his cage, so he could no longer see out, only heard the faraway shouts of the other Fiancés as if they were on another planet. One Scarer even managed to squeeze itself through the bars and latched on to Fishlegs’ shoulder, whispering in his ear.

_ “You’re going to die... you’re go-o-o-oing to di-i-i-ieeeee...” _

It didn’t help that he actually was going to die. Many times, Scarers said spooky things just to scare people, but this time they were spot on.

After all, if  _ Hiccup  _ couldn’t get out of this alive, what chance did  _ Fishlegs  _ have?

Hiccup could talk to dragons. Hiccup could swordfight. Hiccup may not have been the perfect picture of a Viking Hero, but he certainly was a Hero at heart. After all, they were only thirteen, and Hiccup had already saved Fishlegs’ life more times than he could count.

If  _ Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, Hope and Heir to the Tribe of Hairy Hooligans  _ couldn’t get out of this one...

Well.

Fishlegs was doomed.

_ I die a Hero... I die a Hero... _

What if he didn’t want to die at all?

He could hear the Berserks laughing below through the cloud of tiny black dragons. “Look at all those Scarers... he must be terrified...”

_ I die a Hero... I die a Hero... _

Except wait.

No.

He would die a Big Joke. He would die a Nobody. The way he was born, the way Thor intended. He would die a laughingstock for all of the Berserks below. Maybe they would entertain themselves for a few days following, talking about  _ that little fish-faced kid who insisted he was one of us and died scared out of his wits _ . But he would be quickly forgotten after that.

The cage grew ever lower, and the squeak of the winch was going to make him lose his mind completely. Fishlegs’ stomach turned. However much he wanted to be brave, however much he told himself he  _ had  _ to be brave, the fear overtook him, and he slumped against the side of the wicker cage.

The Scarer was still latched onto his shoulder.  _ “You’re going to die...” _

How he wished he could go Berserk right about now.

But he just felt like throwing up.

Hiccup was dead. For all Fishlegs knew, Camicazi was too. There was nothing left for him. A pen, a pair of lobster claws, a bit of sanity, a whole lot of nausea.  _ Useless. _

The Scarer cloud grew thicker, and a second Scarer managed to squeeze through the bars, positioning itself on Fishlegs’ other shoulder. The same whisper, over and over again.  _ “You’re going to die...” _

He was.

And there was nothing at all he could do about it.

“Sing!”

Fishlegs stood up straight, listening intently.

There the voice was again. This time, he was  _ sure  _ he heard it correctly. “Sing!”

“What?” he cried, though his throat was dry, and his voice didn’t carry outside of the clouds of Scarers, so he doubted anyone outside could hear him.

And then, again, just to prove that he wasn’t dreaming, there the voice was, painstakingly familiar: “Sing your Tribal Anthem!”

It was Camicazi.

Thank  _ Thor  _ for her loud voice.

_ She’s not dead, after all,  _ he thought, looking up at where her voice had come from.  _ Would you look at that. _

The Scarer on Fishlegs’ left shoulder let out a squawk, as if it had been burned, and flapped away.

And now Fishlegs was thrust into a new dilemma.  _ My Tribal Anthem...  _ My  _ Tribal Anthem. I don’t have a Tribal Anthem. I don’t even have a Tribe. _

“I don’t have one!” he shouted back, though this time it was certainly not loud enough to penetrate the cloud of Scarers, so he just sat with that thought bouncing around in the cage with him.  _ I don’t have one. I don’t have one. _

But he did.

He  _ did.  _ It did not matter where he had come from, over what oceans his lobster pot had sailed. It did not matter, he thought while being lowered to his death, whether his mother had thrown him out or not. Whether she had been a Berserk or not.

The only thing that mattered was this:

He was a Hooligan.

And as this thought dawned upon Fishlegs, amidst the awful creaking of the chains and the buzz of the Scarers and the shouts of the Berserks and the horrible growling of the Beast down below, a strange feeling of forced calm fell upon him. Not the Berserk feeling, like an itch under his skin, but something that felt more like a blanket of warmth.

“I didn’t mean to come here,” he said, at normal volume.

The Scarer on his right shoulder suddenly stopped whispering.

“And I didn’t mean to stay.”

It gave him a hurt look and squeezed itself back through the bars.

He held a fist over his heart, over the lobster claws. “It’s just where the sea wind blew me one accidental day.”

Now he was truly singing, pushing melody into his words, and the Scarers closest to him were looking at him in total betrayal, like he had somehow stabbed them in the back.

“I wasn’t where I meant to be...”

And now they were disappearing, slowly but surely--he could start to see torchlight again through the gaps.

“And it wasn’t where I had my start...”

He’d never noticed how fitting the Anthem was to him until that very moment, singing it to banish the Scarers from his wicker cage, squeakily traveling to his inevitable death.

He forgot himself so much, he almost smiled.  _ Isn’t Fate artistic? _

“But now I’ll never leave these rain-soaked bogs...”

The last of the Scarers dissipated, and the first person he saw was Camicazi, way up in a tree, almost completely concealed by the leafy branches. She saluted him with two fingers.

It must have been an optical illusion, a trick of the light. But he swore he saw a tear escape her eye.

“...because Berk is where I left my heart!”

The Berserks erupted into applause below, and Fishlegs saw Humungously Hotshot clapping, too.

Fishlegs had lost Hiccup, some of his nausea, and most of his sanity. He still had Camicazi, the lobster-claw necklace, the pen which he had used to get himself into this mess in the first place, and his life, which he would lose any minute now.

Not dying was preferable, but since it was out of the question...

He could die knowing he died a Hero and a Hooligan, through and through. Fishlegs No-Name was not a Big Joke, that was for sure. There were no Accidents.

He clutched his fist around the lobster claws and closed his eyes, starting on the next verse as the cage lowered. He saw Camicazi in his eyelids, saluting him, and Hiccup, grinning at him.

Even the thought of Hiccup filled him with a powerful ache. But he would be bold, in his last moments of life. He would be strong for Camicazi, Heir to the Bog-Burglars. He would be daring for Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third.

But mostly for himself.

Mostly, Fishlegs would be brave for Fishlegs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for skipping Day 6--it was Christmas and I had a lot of stuff going on. But I'm back now!!  
> 


	4. Another Way to Spend Your Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the time of Hiccup's 14th birthday, he's on the run, the most wanted person in the Archipelago.
> 
> This is how his birthday may have gone.

Hiccup awoke fifteen feet above the ground.

This wasn’t, in and of itself, news at all. He had fallen asleep fifteen feet above the ground, and for a minute after he woke, all he could do was thank Thor he was still in the tree.

Hiccup, you see, was rather prone to tree-related injury.

It was pitch-black, the air so thick and inky that he couldn’t even see his own hand stretched out in front of him. He could feel the Wodensfang over his heart, slowly breathing in and out with the telltale rhythms of sleep. Toothless and the Windwalker were surely nearby, perhaps sleeping on another branch.

That was how he got to wondering what on earth had woken him.

He sat very still, listening for the shifting of branches or crunching of leaves that meant a bounty hunter was passing by below. But apart from his own heartbeat, pulsing in his head, he could hear nothing.

After five breathless minutes, he decided that it was nothing, and he was just about to close his eyes and go back to sleep when there was a loud flapping of wings by his right ear.

It surprised him so much that he startled and promptly fell from the tree,  _ just  _ managing to catch himself on the branch he was sitting on.

Now, at this point, anybody else would immediately start panicking.

Hiccup had no such luxury.

_ “Windwalker!”  _ he said, in Dragonese, as loud as he dared.  _ “Windwalker! My sword!” _

The Wodensfang stuck his head out of Hiccup’s waistcoat, bleary-eyed.  _ “What’s going on?” _

_ “I don’t know--WINDWALKER!”  _ cried Hiccup, starting to lose patience.

As if the situation wasn’t dire enough, with a horribly stomach-turning  _ crack,  _ the branch above Hiccup began to splinter.

Another flapping of wings, closer this time, and Hiccup raised his voice.  _ “Windwalker?” _

No answer.

Now he was starting to panic.

He turned his head down, trying to keep from screaming.  _ “Wodensfang, can you go find the Windwalker, please?” _

No verbal answer came from the Wodensfang, but Hiccup assumed that he had gotten the message, for he departed from Hiccup’s waistcoat out into the inky night.

There was complete silence for what felt like a long time following, although it very well could have been just a few seconds. Darkness warped Hiccup’s sense of time. He had sent away his only ally, and there he was, alone. A skinny boy of thirteen who had been speaking Dragonese for so long he almost forgot how to speak in Norse, draped in scraps of clothing, hanging from a slowly splintering tree branch fifteen feet above the ground in complete darkness.

The Outcast of the Archipelago, everyone. 

Quite suddenly, out of the blue (or rather, black), there was a bright light shining directly into Hiccup’s face. 

With a cry of surprise, he instinctively took one hand away from the branch to shield his eyes.

This, it turned out, was a huge mistake. Hanging by only one hand proved much harder than hanging by two, and the shift in his weight caused the branch to splinter off from the tree completely. 

So it was that Hiccup fell fifteen feet from the tree, luckily onto the Windwalker, who caught him halfway down. He didn’t realize the dragon he had landed on was his riding dragon at first, and so he nearly jumped right off the Windwalker’s back in an attempt to keep himself from getting captured, only desisting when the Windwalker spoke.  _ “I’ve got you.” _

_ “Windwalker?” _

_ “Yes,”  _ the Windwalker said.

_ “Oh, thank Thor--do you have that sword we stole from the Uglithugs? I think someone’s found us--” _

Hiccup paused mid sentence to look up at the bright light that had caused him to fall from his tree in the first place. It was a beam of light, emanating from a dragon’s eyes, but Hiccup couldn’t see what the dragon looked like other than the fact that its eyes were remarkably small.

Hiccup squinted, and he could see more details--the dragon’s wings were small, too, and its tail, and--

_ Toothless. _

Hiccup slumped on the back of the Windwalker in powerful relief. They weren’t being attacked, and the Windwalker wasn’t dead, and Hiccup was going to  _ kill  _ Toothless for giving him the fright of his life (but what else was new?).

The Wodensfang landed on Hiccup’s knee, looking proud.  _ “I found him.” _

Hiccup nodded at him.  _ “Yes, I know, great work.” _

Toothless flapped down excitedly, hovering around Hiccup’s face.  _ “Wake up!” _

_ “I’m already awake,”  _ grumbled Hiccup,  _ “thanks to you--I thought we were being attacked.” _

The Wodensfang looked disapprovingly at Toothless.  _ “Manners, Toothless. You scared him.” _

Hiccup rubbed his eyes and stood up, immediately pitching to the side and just barely catching himself on a nearby tree (the falling ordeal had left him with a horribly askew sense of balance).

The Windwalker looked concerned.  _ “Are you all right? Do you still need the sword?” _

_ “No,”  _ Hiccup assured him,  _ “I’m all right--Toothless, can you explain to me why I needed to wake up so early?” _

Toothless had been looking wildly excited, flapping around, doing loop-the-loops in the air, and at this, he promptly stopped.  _ “What?” _

Hiccup pushed off from the tree and stood up, swaying slightly.  _ “Why on earth did you wake me up?” _

Toothless flew closer.  _ “It’s your b-b-birthday.” _

Hiccup, still shaken from the events of the last few minutes, voiced the first thought that came into his head, which was  _ “Seriously? You make me think I’m in mortal danger just because it’s my...” _

He paused.

Since when was it his birthday?

_ “It’s my birthday?” _

Toothless nodded earnestly. 

_ “Happy birthday,”  _ supplied the Wodensfang, nestling back into Hiccup’s waistcoat.

The Windwalker smiled at Hiccup.  _ “Happy birthday.” _

Hiccup, out of habit, put his hand around the lobster claw necklace, sitting proudly on his chest. It was his birthday.

The sun was starting to rise, and he could see everything a little better now. He sat down in the dirt, and the Windwalker curled around him. Toothless had taken up debating with the Wodensfang again.

_ “T-t-toothless was polite,”  _ he argued.  _ “He remembered Hiccup’s birthday.” _

_ “Yes, well done, Toothless,”  _ said the Wodensfang.  _ “But you still gave him a great scare.” _

Hiccup thought, again, of his family. He wondered how his father was holding up, if Gobber was still the same proud teacher, if Camicazi was still burgling the pants off everybody in the Archipelago with her usual swagger about her. He wondered where his mother was; if Valhallarama was far away, and if she had heard that her son had been pronounced an Outcast and a slave and a fugitive.

And he thought of Fishlegs, placing the necklace around his neck, saying  _ I do not turn,  _ over and over again.

A part of him believed that it was the necklace that had kept Hiccup alive so far, because, let’s face it, the odds of him surviving this far on his own was not just im _ probable,  _ it was im _ possible. _

Then again, he was always doing impossible things.

_ Please, let them be safe, _ he prayed.  _ Let them all be okay. Please. Just for my birthday. _

The sun was the only answer Hiccup got--it continued to rise steadily over the horizon, and Hiccup could see a glimpse of orange between the trees.

The Wodensfang had given up fighting Toothless and instead went back to sleep inside his waistcoat, and Toothless, for lack of a better place to sleep, settled on Hiccup’s shoulder. The Windwalker was already asleep, snoring lightly, and Hiccup rested his head on the back of his dragon, looking up at the canopy of trees.

It was his birthday.

That meant he was fourteen, or three-and-a-half.

There was a good chance he would only ever live to be that old.

Even Toothless, however energized he had been, was starting to get sleepy now, and he closed his eyes and curled into a little ball on Hiccup’s shoulder.

_ “Happy b-b-birthday, Hiccup,”  _ he whispered, just loud enough for Hiccup to hear.

Hiccup gave him an affectionate scratch behind the horns in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this thought while trying to map out the timeline of this series and it killed me.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!! ❤︎


End file.
